


I'd give it all up for you

by pinkpolkadots



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, F/F, Follows fairly parallel to canon mostly, Past Mai/Zuko (Avatar), childhood crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27571528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkpolkadots/pseuds/pinkpolkadots
Summary: Ty Lee had always been a little bit in love with her best friend.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Kudos: 39





	I'd give it all up for you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for any inconsistencies with canon. I'm taking "creative license". I realize that fire alarms might not exist in the Fire Nation, but they do in this interpretation. Also, no beta. I tried my best to read it all through and catch errors, but if I missed any, I'm sorry!

If she thought about it, Ty Lee could trace her crush on Mai back to the time she’d accidentally lit the school on fire. They’d both been seven, and Ty Lee was maybe, a little bit, wishing she was a fire-bender. Especially since Azula had always excelled at bending flames to her will. She never hesitated to flaunt her talents, which only made Ty Lee feel a thousand steps behind.

For that reason, Ty Lee hadn’t told the not-yet-princess about her plan to realize her fire-bending talents. She had told Mai, though. The darker haired girl had scoffed and told Ty Lee that bending didn’t work the way she thought it did.

They’d been camped out in a vacant classroom on the third floor at the end of the school day. Ty Lee had already tried creating her own flame; that’d been embarrassingly unsuccessful. So, she resorted to the next best thing; Ty Lee brandished the lighter she’d swiped from her eldest sister’s room.

Ty Lee hoped that tampering with an existing flame would be an easier starting point.

Unfortunately, things hadn’t gone according to plan.

Mai had been sitting at one of the desks by the back of the room. She’d started some homework, having grown bored a while ago, with watching her friend squint angrily at her palm and attempting to conger a flame from thin air. She hadn’t even realized the other had the lighter until she heard the shriek.

Ty Lee had let her hand get too close to the flame. It stung for just a second, and in her surprise, she’d dropped the lighter. It rolled two feet to the right where it connected with the floor to ceiling length curtains.

Mai hurried to grab Ty Lee’s wrist and dragged them out of the room, pulling the fire alarm on their way out of the building.

They ran to the park a block over. Their hands remained firmly linked.

“Ty?” Mai asked as the two caught their breath by the swing set. Both girls dropped their hands to their sides.

“Yes, Mai,” the lighter hair girl replied, knowing she had made a big mistake today. She hoped Mai would still want to be her friend.

“You’re not a fire-bender.”

Ty Lee’s eyes drifted to the toe of her new shoes as she dug it into the sand. “I know.”

She startled at the feel of Mai’s hands on her shoulders. “That doesn’t mean you’re not important.”

That puzzled Ty Lee. Growing up with as many sisters as she had, her lack of bending, the way people always compared her to Azula. She had never considered herself to be particularly important. “How would you know?”

“Cause I know you, duh,” Mai replied. “You know I’m not a bender either. Stick with me, and we’ll prove our worth to everyone else.”

“How?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Mai assured her. “We’ve got time.”

Someone had extinguished the fire before it could do any considerable damage. The Royal Fire Academy for Grils still caught the two the next morning. They’d both forgotten their backpacks in the classroom, too distracted with getting out of the building to remember to grab them. Mai didn’t try and blame Ty Lee for being the one to start the fire. They were both suspended for two weeks, and their families were furious. Azula called them both idiots.

None of that mattered to Ty Lee, though. From then on out, Mai and Ty Lee were in it together. They had value; they had time; they had each other.

And Ty Lee never fully understood why they might need anyone else.

///

Zuko had always been around to some extent. Being Azula’s brother, it made sense. That didn’t mean Ty Lee had to be thrilled about it.

She didn’t have anything against to boy, per se. Aside from the obvious. He tended to monopolize Mai’s attention. Ty Lee doubted he even realized it. Zuko was a bit daft that way, and she was sure her best friend could do better.

They were twelve when Mai finally admitted it to Ty Lee.

The girls had been sitting by the pond. The royal family was training, and the girls were waiting for the prince and princess to come outside and play. As they waited, Ty Lee had been collecting stones to skip across the pond’s smooth surface.

“Hey, Ty?” Mai shifted from her perch by the water’s edge to get the other’s attention.

Ty Lee hummed a response to let the other know she was listening as she gathered her pile of rocks and carried them over, setting them between both girls, now sitting side by side.

“Have you ever had a crush?” Mai asked, eyes tracing the path of a distant turtle duck.

Ty Lee tried her best to ignore the way her heart threatened to race right out of her chest. “Yeah.”

“I think,” Mai started and then took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I think I like Zuko.”

 _Oh_.

Ty Lee hadn’t realized how long she’d gone without any form of reaction until Mai prompted her. “Ty?”

“Really? That’s great, Mai! When did you realize it?” Ty Lee asked. She was trying to inject as much cheer as she could into her tone. A veiled attempt to mask how a part of her felt very much like crying.

Mai was still looking at the turtle ducks, which allowed Ty Lee to study the other girl without getting caught in her mixed emotions. The conflict between what she felt and was trying to project.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Mai admitted. “At first, I thought I just felt bad for him, for the way Azula treated him. Then I realized that I liked talking to him, looked forward to hearing from him. You know?”

Ty Lee knew what Mai was trying to say. Ty Lee had found the words to describe her feelings for the darker haired girl years ago. She understood the need to be near someone, the thrill that came with catching the other person looking at you, the pride she took in making the other laugh. Ty Lee knew she had a crush.

Ty Lee also had her suspicions before this conversation that Mai might have feelings for the prince. That didn’t mean it didn’t sting. That the confirmation that her feelings had only ever been one-sided didn’t make her heart sink.

“Yeah,” Ty Lee finally lamented. “I know.”

Before either of them could say anything else, Azula and Zuko emerged from the castle. Entering the courtyard one after the other.

Azula had her head held high, carried by confident strides. Zuko slumped after her. Mai probably thought he looked endearing.

Ty Lee tried her best to greet her friends with her usual level of cheer.

///

It was a month later, give or take, that Mai approached Ty Lee again. Ty Lee had just gotten home from training. She’d worked hard to build a reputation for herself over the years, since that one time when they were seven. They had both proven themselves.

It was a feat Ty Lee credited to their shared determination and cunning. Most of all, however, she knew that it was their unwavering belief in each other that spurred them on when they hit a rough patch. Neither of them wanted to let the other one down.

Only as Ty Lee walked up the front steps to her family home, she noticed Mai lounging on the porch swing.

“Mai?” she asked, surprised. Pleasantly so.

“Hey Ty, glad you’re home,” she said, sitting up, the corner of her lips lifting in an almost smile. Ty Lee couldn’t help but let her own smile grow at that. 

Ty Lee gestured for the other to follow her as she stepped inside. A couple of her sisters greeted Mai as they headed up to her room.

“What can I help you with?” Ty Lee asked as they sat next to each other on the edge of her bed.

“Who said I needed help?”

She shrugged in response. “I don’t know. It’s been a while since you dropped by unannounced. We can play a game of Pai Sho if you want, though. Let’s see if you actually win this time.”

“You cheated last time we played,” Mai pointed out.

Ty Lee shrugged, going to set it up next to her bed. “Then don’t let me this time,” she says plainly. “Or out cheat me,” Ty Lee further welcomed.

After a long game, Ty Lee was happy to claim her victory. As she cleaned up, Mai finally asked the question that’d been on her mind since she got here.

“How do I get Zuko to notice me?” she asks.

Ty Lee laughed and tried her best not to let it sound as humorless as it truly was. “He already does.”

“As a friend,” she groaned. “I want him to notice me the way all the other boys notice you.”

Ty Lee sighed. “You don’t want him to notice you like that,” she said to Mai. Turning 13 had brought with it puberty, and that had ushered in a wave of unwanted attention. She didn’t enjoy the stares or comments. She couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying that.

“Why not?” Mai asked.

“If he looked at you like that, then he wouldn’t like you for the right reason. You have his attention now. You might not see it, but trust me,” Ty Lee assured her best friend.

“Then what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“I can’t understand how you don’t see his interest in you, but I do get why he can’t see you’re interested in him,” Ty Lee tried to explain before making her recommendation. She couldn’t believe she was about to help Zuko of all people out. “You can be hard to read; if you want him to make a move, you need to let him know you’re interested. Maybe flirt a bit?”

“How?”

“You’ll figure it out, I know you will,” Ty Lee assured her.

///

Before Mai could prove Ty Lee right, the Fire Lord banished Zuko. Sending his son off on a fruitless hunt for the Avatar.

Ty Lee knew what it meant to be sent on a ‘mission’ to find a person who hadn’t been spotted in nearly a hundred years. A person whose entire race had been demolished largely due to the existence of the said person. Someone who had failed to appear despite a near-endless war begging for their very return.

The Avatar was dead; Zuko was now in search of a ghost. Which is to say, he’d been exiled and would never return.

Ty Lee knew it. Everyone knew it. Expect for Mai, that was.

She seemed sure that the Avatar was out there somewhere, and between the ongoing training, regular missions with Azula, and family duties, Mai searched. She read extensively about the Avatar. On trips outside the confines of the Fire Nation, she would always be on the lookout for anything suspicious.

And as it had always been, they were in it together. Therefore, Ty Lee was looking as well.

When Ty Lee had expressed her belief that the Avatar had died, Mai had accepted it was a possibility. Mai dedicated part of her attention to researching the possibility of the Avatar being secretly reincarnated into the Water Nation, assuming the Avatar had been working entirely behind the scenes.

It would have been a more viable theory if not because they were in the midst of a war. If there were an avatar in existence, they’d be on the front lines. Ty Lee was certain of that.

As the years passed, the efforts slowed but never died out completely.

Even news of the Avatar’s confirmed existence didn’t spur on the resurgence present in the first couple of years. If anything, the news brought with it the reality that the most they could do was wait, given their position in the Fire Nation.

It was on one of the rare nights that they’d gotten back from a successful mission and been allowed home without a debrief.

It was late, and everyone had agreed to review their new intel early the next day before heading off on yet another mission.

“Can I stay over tonight?” Ty Lee asked Mai as they headed towards home. She didn’t want to deal with her sisters’ nagging questions or the loud noise that tended to fill their house, especially on Friday nights when everyone would have friends over.

“Yeah,” Mai said.

Neither of them spoke much on the rest of the walk to Mai’s house, tired from a week-long mission where the days had stretch long. Once they got to the house, it was quiet, always was. Mai's parents liked to keep to themselves, and Mai was an only child.

Mai’s bed was large, and they each took up opposite sides with plenty of space between them. There were plenty of guest rooms, but they’d grown used to sleeping in close proximity since they’d started missions a couple of years back. It made them both feel safer, secure.

Ty Lee had been just about to drift off when she heard the other’s whispered words.

“Are you scared?” Mai’s near inaudible words settle in the space between them.

Ty Lee wasn’t sure what she meant. “Of infiltrating Ba Sing Se?”

“Yeah,” this word no louder than the last. She got the feeling that this was one of the murmured conversations that could only ever happen in the dark. Maybe that was why they both kept their eyes glued to the ceiling; looking at each other would make the words too real.

“Not really,” Ty Lee admitted. “We’ve got a solid plan, and if anyone can pull it off, it’s us.”

Mai hummed but didn’t sound convinced. “I’m not as sure.”

“It’ll be fine,” Ty Lee reassured. “Plus, you’ll look great in green.”

Mai laughed in hushed breaths. “Thanks, Ty.”

“Just being honest,” she assured her friend.

Mai seemed to think for an extended pause, Ty Lee unsure if she should go to sleep or not. “I’m not worried about whether or not we _can_ do it. I’m more unsure about if we _should_.”

“What do you mean?” Ty Lee asked.

“It feels like a turning point,” Mai said. “Like after this, nothing will ever be the same again.”

“Maybe,” Ty Lee said. “This doesn’t have to change, though. That’s what I like to remind myself whenever things seem too daunting or I get too nervous. That I’ve got you by my side, and neither of us is going anywhere.”

Ty Lee could feel the bed shift as Mai turned to face her, so Ty Lee did the same.

“Nothing could convince you to leave?” Mai asked.

“Nope.”

Ty Lee’s eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness of Mai’s room, and so she could just make out the way Mai’s eyes narrowed at her. The silence stretched for long enough that Ty Lee almost convinced herself that the other had fallen asleep with her eyes open.

“Ty?”

Ty Lee startled back to full wakefulness. “Yeah?”

“What if you were better off without me?” Mai asked. A part of Ty Lee wanted to laugh. She would’ve if this weren’t one of those murmured conversations that could only ever happen in the dark. Laughter, true laughter would’ve been too sudden. Regardless, the thought of a life without Mai was ludicrous.

“That could never happen,” Ty Lee said. The absence of laughter left the words feeling heavy. Ty Lee wasn’t sure how to fix it, and so she deflected, “Tomorrow is a long day. We should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Mai said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Ty Lee mumbled back.

It was only after Ty Lee had turned her back to Mai, in an effort to get comfortable, that the other spoke up again.

“One last thing, Ty,” she whispered, two fingers reaching out to brush Ty Lee’s turned shoulder, gone so quick she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it. “You’ll look better in green.”

 _Not possible_. Ty Lee knew better than to say the words out loud. Instead, she murmured one last hushed, “Thanks.” With that, sleep took them both.

///

Masquerading as Kyoshi Warriors to gain the Earth King’s trust is far easier than Ty Lee had anticipated. It was challenging work, sure, but everything seemed to be falling into place. Azula had wrapped the Dai Li around her finger, and they managed to make fools of Ba Sing Se’s internal defense mechanisms almost entirely.

They’d even captured the Earth King, a few high-ranking officials too loyal to the King, and a couple of the Avatar’s friends. Nothing could stop them now.

At least it had seemed that way. Then Ty Lee found herself stuck in a bridge position with her hands and feet shackled in the earth, and Mai had let the Water Nation boy and the small, powerful Earth Bender get away with the Earth King and his bear.

Azula was off attending to something else, unknown to the two.

Mai was currently working to free Ty Lee from the earth. Once she finished, the two slumped over to catch their breaths.

“Woah, head rush,” Ty Lee admitted with a laugh, after having spent so much time upside down.

“Let’s go get cleaned up,” Mai said, pulling Ty Lee to her feet.

“What?” she asked, feeling like she’d missed something. “Shouldn’t we go after them?”

“They’re long gone by now. Nothing has actually changed though; we still have Ba Sing Se,” Mai said. “They have nowhere left to run, not really. They’ll be back.”

Ty Lee found herself nodding. Mai’s fingers interlocked with hers, dragging her towards the rooms they’d been staying in since arriving in the Ba Sing Se.

They’d washed the make-up off their faces side by side. When Ty Lee turned to leave the washroom to find comfortable clothes to change into, Mai caught her wrist. “Missed a spot,” Mai said delicately.

As Ty Lee turned to face her, Mai raised her washcloth and wiped a smudge that she must have left behind. Ty Lee tried not to overthink how Mai’s fingers brushed her neck as she cleaned the spot below her ear.

Then Mai reached up and tucked a stray piece of hair behind that same ear, and Ty Lee wasn’t certain that she wasn’t dead. Maybe the little earth bender had killed her, and this was her version of eternal bliss. Something about that sat wrong with her, though.

Not the dead part, that was viable.

The eternal bliss part, had she earned that yet? Mai had been right in predicting that they were at a turning point. She’d likely put it all together long before Ty Lee had.

It’d started to feel less and less like they stood for anything on the side of good or justice.

“Thanks,” Ty Lee breathed.

Mai just nodded in response and turned back to the mirror.

As she walked away, all Ty Lee could think about was Mai. Ty Lee had known she had a crush on Mai since she first committed arson at age seven. But if anything, the word _crush_ erred on the side of too small. It didn’t carry enough weight. Didn’t encapsulate the way Ty Lee sometimes felt like she was walking along the bottom of the ocean, just wishing for the barest rays of the sun.

Later as they lay down in separate neighboring beds, Ty Lee called out.

“Mai?”

“Yeah?” she replied, voice tired but not inconvenienced.

Ty Lee thought back on her earlier realization. “I think I get it now.”

Ty Lee could hear, more than see, Mai sitting up. “Get what?”

“The turning point,” Ty Lee said.

She was surprised to feel the dip of the bed next to her. She met Mai’s eyes in the dark.

“What do we do?” Mai whispered.

Ty Lee wasn’t sure quite what to say. They’d always stood together, and in doing so, whenever she didn’t have answers, she’d turn to Mai, who always seemed to know the things Ty Lee couldn’t put together. And she knew she’d offered the same balance to Mai. This moment was the first time they were both at a standstill.

“I don’t know,” Ty Lee said.

“Do you think that the Avatar and the Earth King will be back in the morning with an army?” Mai asked.

Ty Lee startled, sitting up, the two now facing each other. “I thought you said it wasn’t an issue.”

“I said it wasn’t an issue yet,” Mai corrected. “We’re pretty strong, right?”

“Yeah,” Ty Lee said, trying not to let herself spiral with Mai in the darkness of their room. Realistically most of the other side’s troops were already at war with the Fire Nation. What army could they show up with on such short notice?

“But war is a numbers game,” Mai said. Ty Lee wasn’t sure she appreciated all the negativity at this moment, but she knew that since her friend was concerned, she’d need to talk her down. The reverse had happened enough times that Ty Lee could never judge.

“What are you saying?” Ty Lee asked. Needing to understand the conversation they were having.

Mai took a deep breath and slid her hand atop Ty Lee’s, where it rested between them.

“The war is coming to an end. It won’t finish without a battle, a big one. I’m not naïve enough to think we won’t be on the front lines. We’ve made ourselves too valuable not to be used as vital weapons.”

Mai wasn’t a talker. She spoke more to Ty Lee than anyone else sure, but this was a lot for even her.

“We’re going to be okay,” Ty Lee said.

“No,” Mai said, words turning sharp. “You can’t make that promise, I wish you could, but you can’t.”

Ty Lee could feel the anger in herself begin to boil. “If you’re so set on that being true, why even have this conversation. What do either of us stand to gain.”

“If there’s a chance I only have so much time left, days, weeks, months,” Mai began to list. Ty Lee slipped her hand out from under Mai’s, hating the fact that the other sounded like she’d already given up. Mai must have noticed Ty Lee’s anger at the gesture. “Maybe even a lifetime,” she conceded.

Ty Lee gave a stern nod.

“The point is, there’s something I want to do, in case I never get the chance again,” Mai admitted.

“What is it?” Ty Lee asked voice clipped, still upset.

“Can I kiss you?” Mai whispered.

Ty Lee was at a loss for words. She blinked up at Mai for a breath, maybe longer. Then she found herself nodding.

Ty Lee felt their noses brush before their lips met. A soft brush of lips at first, and then she could feel Mai pulling away. She refused to let it all end there. She lent back in and sealed their lips again, her fingers coming up to brush Mai’s porcelain cheek under closed lashed.

Ty Lee had never been able to bend fire, but if she could, she imagined the rush might feel something like this. Like the burn that raced through her veins, the way her heart sped while time seemed to slow simultaneously.

They had just pulled away to catch their breath when they heard footsteps echoing in the hallway. It gave them a couple of seconds to sit up straight and put some space between them before the door burst open, and the lights flared.

“Where the hell have you two been?” Azula demanded. “The Avatar is dead.”

Ty Lee was still processing the words, too distracted by the implications to realized the figure that stood behind the princess.

Or at least she had been distracted until she heard Mai exhale.

“Zuko?”

///

 _Zuko_. Ty Lee knew it was unfair to blame him for things he remained completely unaware of, but she couldn’t help it. There was just so much anger inside of her.

How could Mai _kiss her_? How could she do that and then go on with her life as if it never happened? Mai had kissed _her_. Not the other way around.

Mai had kissed her, and then the second Zuko walked back into their lives, she ran into his arms. The two had been dating for weeks now. Ty Lee could only act like she wasn’t dying on the inside for so much longer. She was supposed to be Mai’s friend too.

It was all too much. She was spending her time almost exclusively with Azula. Most people would assume that that was due entirely to the fact that Zuko and Mai were so disgustingly happy together. That would have been a fair observation, except that for Ty Lee, it was paired with her now growing uncertainty that she’d ever be able to look her best friend in the eyes again.

It’s when they’re at the beach that Mai finally corners Ty Lee. The siblings are bickering in the house unpacking, last Ty Lee saw. She’d forgone the unpacking and had wandered down to the shore. She sat with her chin propped up on her knees, listening to the waves as they crashed against the shore.

“You’re avoiding me,” Mai said, sneaking up on the girl with lighter hair.

Ty Lee tried her best not to appear shaken. “Gee, I wonder why.”

“You know it isn’t personal,” Mai said, and Ty Lee laughs bitterly, echoing the words back at her.

“You kissed me and then refused to talk about it,” Ty Lee reminded her. “And then to top it off, you immediately got yourself a boyfriend.”

“I thought we were at a turning point,” Mai admitted. Ty Lee wanted to rip her own hair out.

“Clearly, I have no idea what in Agni’s name you mean when you say that,” Ty Lee spat.

“I thought one of us would be dead soon,” Mai said as if that was easy to say. Maybe it was for her. Ty Lee would never understand.

Ty Lee scoffed. “How romantic,” she replied icily.

Ty Lee refused to soften when Mai sat next to her in the sand. “I had this dream,” Mai admitted softly. “That in the bustle of the war we’d slip away, build a new life for ourselves somewhere else. Girls can love other girls in Ba Sing Se, did you know that? And we both know you look good in green. We’d be happy.”

Ty Lee hated that her heart warmed at the words. At the way Mai had said love as if that could be a part of their future. She wanted that. She’d walk away from everything if it meant a life with Mai.

“We could still do that,” Ty Lee whispered. Afraid to let herself hope.

“No,” Mai said. “We can’t, the Avatar is dead, and it’s only a matter of time before the war dies out, and the Fire Nation rules supreme.”

“Don’t say that,” Ty Lee said.

“It’s the truth.”

“So what?” Ty Lee demanded. “You’re just going to spend the rest of your life with him? _Zuko_?”

“Yeah,” Mai said.

“Well, I can’t do that,” Ty Lee said. Mai inclined her head in question. “I can’t just pick some man to spend the rest of my life with.”

“That’s okay,” Mai whispered. Unsure how to stop the tears that had slowly started to streak their way down Ty Lee’s cheeks.

“It’s not! It’s not okay,” Ty Lee insisted. “And I can’t just watch you spend the rest of your life with Zuko either.”

“What do you mean?” Mai asked.

“I mean when the war is over, which you’re so sure it’s soon to be, and my services are no longer needed; I’m leaving,” Ty Lee said, trying her best to will the tears away as her words turned to steel.

Mai looked truly taken aback for the first time since she sat down. “I thought you said nothing would ever convince you to leave me?”

“I was wrong,” Ty Lee said through grit teeth. It was the last straw. She was hurting, and she’d found the place that would make Mai hurt back, so she pressed, “At the time, I thought you’d never want me. Now to know that you do, but you’re too cowardly to do anything about it. I can hardly stand to look at you.”

With that, Ty Lee stood and walked away.

///

Ty Lee spent the rest of her time at the beach flirting with men in public in a petty attempt to piss Mai off. And moping in private, wishing for the war to be over so she could stop pretending to be Zuko’s friend, _Mai’s friend_. It was maddening.

Time passed similarly after that. Nothing changed much. Then Zuko left, and Ty Lee couldn’t find the energy to care anymore. She’d spent so much time angry at him or things he bore no responsibility for, and at the end of the day, he was the one brave enough to do what she couldn’t. Walk away.

She could tell Mai was hurting, but then again, so was she. Instead of focusing on that, she threw herself into her work. Anytime Mai tried to approach her; Ty Lee would brush her off.

She refused to be the second choice. A distraction kept behind closed doors until she could find some other man to live out her life with, Ty Lee would not subject herself to that.

Ty Lee doesn’t even fully remember the trip to Boiling Rock, most of life having drifted beneath a sheet of thick indifferent fog. Nothing seemed important until Azula turned on Mai.

Ty Lee hadn’t even needed to think before she immobilized the princess. Taking a firm stance against the Fire Nation in a few quick jabs of her finger. Treason didn’t seem so daunting when she was following in Mai’s footsteps.

Being a prisoner was a new experience, to put things lightly. Mai and Ty Lee weren’t royalty, but they had spent a sizable portion of their childhood in and around a palace. Ty Lee still wasn’t talking to Mai, not really, but she was also the only ally she had, plus they shared a cell.

So, if occasionally she’d make a pointed comment about the uniforms being uninspired, the food too bland, or their inmates acting excessively rude, then so be it. It was better than talking to herself, and if Mai snickered and occasionally made her own observations, who could blame her.

One day they were sitting at the edge of the courtyard. The sun was high in the sky, and their fellow inmates were also out and about in the yard, although not close enough to hear their exact words.

“So, we’re in prison,” Mai said, although Ty Lee had made no prior indication that she was at all interested in talking.

“Really?” Ty Lee asked, acting as if it were news to her. “What gave you that impression?”

“Ty, I’m trying to be serious,” Mai said. Ty Lee just gestured for her to continue. “The Avatar is alive, and we’ll never stand with the Fire Nation again, as it exists today.”

“All very astute observations,” Ty Lee said with a roll of her eyes.

“Run away with me,” Mai said.

Ty Lee shot forward and covered the other’s mouth. “You can’t just say shit like that in prison with three guards right over there,” Ty Lee whispered furiously.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Mai said from between Ty Lee’s fingers. “I meant, spend the rest of your life with me. Whether that’s here or somewhere else, it doesn’t matter to me. As long as it’s with you.”

Ty Lee stared at Mai for a long time. Trying to make sure she meant it.

“Ty?” Mai asked, breaking the odd staring contest.

“Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?” Mai asked, and it was no less shocking this time than it was the first.

Ty Lee found herself looking around at the guards and fellow inmates, all illuminated by broad daylight. “What, here?” she squeaked.

“Yes, here,” Mai said with a warm smile stretching across her face as she reached up to play with a strand of Ty Lee’s soft hair.

“Okay,” Ty Lee whispered, no longer convinced any of this was real.

Then Mai’s lips met hers, and she knew at once it must be. There was no other feeling that left her more alive than the press of Mai’s lips and sweep of her tongue.

After that, Ty Lee spent most of her time at boiling rock with her hand pressed firmly in Mai’s. They shared kisses when they could and talked about whatever came to mind.

Befriending the Kyoshi Warriors was a slow process. It took time and effort to earn each other’s trust back. The two groups had a long history, but with time they grew closer.

The war ending felt surreal. It wasn’t always easy, and they got into their fair share of disagreements, but they put in the work to make sure it lasted. And the years that followed were like nothing they had ever anticipated. Being a Kyoshi Warrior meant having a family, a place to call home where they were accepted and important all at the same time.

They were living in a small cottage of their own, among several other cottages filled with their fellow warriors. Mai and Ty Lee were alone in their front room playing Pai Sho.

“You really need to stop cheating,” Mai said with a roll of her eyes as Ty Lee placed a tile down.

“If I played fair, then you’d win,” Ty Lee complained, waiting for the other to take her turn.

Mai shook her head but couldn’t stop the smile snuck across her lips. “And why can’t I win.”

“Winning makes me happy,” Ty Lee explained, then added, “Making me happy makes you happy.”

Mai just laughed. “I am going to win this game sooner or later.”

“Sure, you are, dear.”

“I love you. Even though you’re a terrible cheat at Pai Sho,” Mai confessed because she felt like saying it. It wasn’t the first time they’d said it, but it never failed to put a smile on both their faces.

“I love you too, especially when we’re working. Got to love a woman in uniform,” Ty Lee replied. “You’ve always looked great in green.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! (Thanks for reading 😊)


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